A LETTER offering US$4.9 million sounded too good to be true.

But the letter that arrived in Denis Hession's letterbox on Friday did not fool the Bogangar resident.

Mr Hession received a letter with an official-looking letterhead from a man who identified himself as a legal practitioner in Kuala Lumpur.

The letter claimed a late expatriate client with the same surname had left money Mr Hession was able to collect from Malaysia.

Mr Hession said there was no chance he would fall for such a scam.

“I've had similar things like that Nigerian scam a couple of years ago,” he said.

"I think they do a job on a fair amount of people and ... if they get one in a thousand they are doing pretty well.

“I think it's a numbers game that they play.”

An Australian Competition and Consumer Commission spokesman said the letter Mr Hession received fell under a category they referred to as mass marketed advance fee fraud.

In Australia in 2010 there were 14,739 reports of these scams and 1563 people reported losing money.

The total amount reported lost by these people was more than $25 million.

The spokesman said if Mr Hession responded, the scammer would probably request bank account details, copies of identity documents as verification, and to pay a series of fees, charges, certificates or taxes to help release or transfer the money out of the country through his bank.